I've had this thought inside my head for a while since my last world, and I just figured it out. A pneumatic piston is a 7@4 tech skill. My last world had a 6@ bias. My MAK 90 worked fine. The problem here is that the MAK 90 uses a pneumatic system to cycle the action of the weapon. It uses the expanding gases of the bullet firing to cycle the action. My MAK 90 should not have worked in my last world. Kalishnov, the inventor of the AK-47 (which is just a full-auto MAK 90) invented this system in the guns he built. It's far more reliable than most. However, I'm pretty sure it was also curved out in my last world.
I guess I should clarify that. The gun would still fire, but I would need to cycle the action manually. It would, in effect, turn my semiautomatic assault rifle into a bolt action.
Design was almost certainly curved out. However, using the gun does not require the same understanding of pressure systems that designing the gun would require; you can get away with using less technical knowledge of pressure if you're just firing it, and so it makes sense that design would be curved out before use.
There's a rule for this. It's called the Standard Repair Rule, and you'll find it in the introduction to the Tech skills chapter. (There's also a table reproduced in Appendix 4 which sums it up pretty well.) Unless otherwise specified, the bias intensity of a Build skill is one lower than a Design, a Modify skill is two lower, a Repair skill three lower, a Sabatoge skill four lower, and an Operate skill is five lower than the related Design. This can push the bias as low as @0 for Operate on the condition that operation requires no understanding of the tech principles in question. (If understanding is required, the skill must be at least @1). Since the cycling mechanism is essentially automatic, I could see an argument that this component of the skill is T7@0, the rest of the skill is T6@1, and thus that firing the gun is T7@1. Since any @0 or @1 skill is within the curve and thus usable by a verser, your gun worked (after you made your first roll successfully).
Another way to approach this is to say that since the pneumatic cycling system is dependent on the explosion from the bullet, it's really closer to a T6@ Explosive skill than a T7@ Pressure skill, and thus it's all part of your T6@1 Operate Explosive-Driven Slug Thrower. After all, if you think about it, the fact that the bullet leaves the barrel at all is due to pressure from expanding gases, but the handgun that fires it is still classed as a T6@ Explosives technology.
Edit: I was apparently still typing my post when you made your clarification, but most of what I said still applies, and what doesn't is probably obvious enough.
Actually, it's a rifle, not a handgun. If you've ever seen an AK47 in movies or in real life, there's a tube that is over the barrel, that connects to the barrel. Where it connects is a hole in the barrel. When the bullet passes that point, the gases from the explosion get forced up into the tube and cycle the action. This costs the weapon a marginal amount of power, but greatly improves the reliability.
That explaination made sense Scott. I just would have felt like I was cheating if I didn't say anything about it.
I used a handgun at the end because the bias of the rifle might have been in doubt - I wanted an example that we were both sure actually was T6@1. Sorry that was unclear.
I'm glad the rest makes sense.
Just to be clear on something. We can pretty much agree (I think) that my MAK 90 uses a 7@1 system to operate, therefore, it can be used by me in a flatline tech bias. The thing that I am unclear about is that it can ONLY be used by me. I'm a verser, so I am not as bound by the biases as the indigs are. My question though is, what changed? I can use the 7@1 weapon, but an indig can't. What changed? The indig is just as capable of pulling the trigger as I am, but in his hands, the gun wouldn't work, but in my hands it would work fine? How is that possible?
O.K., some quick points:
- Scott is correct on all points; this is to clarify.
- I had not realized that the automatic system of the MAK was classed, in anyone's mind, as a pressure system. I can see that as a possibility. If I understand the Tommy Gun aright, its automatics were strictly explosive-driven--the kick of firing advanced the mechanism.
- Since the typical user would have no ability to tell the difference between the explosive-driven action of the Thompson and the gas pressure-driven action of the MAK, I take both systems to be @0 in operation. I agree that the design of the MAK would require a higher 7@ skill, but the use does not. Thus technically the use of the MAK pressure-driven system is a 7@0 skill.
- There is a very slight bit of uncertainty in the treatment of @0 skills for indigs in the rules: can they or can't they? Usually they can. For example, any samurai can step into the street facing an opponent and use a Psi 8@0 posturing skill to psyche his adversary, even though his Psi bias is 0@ and the world's psi bias is 0@. Thus technically in the 6@2 world of The Dancing Princess, an indig can be taught to operate the 6@1 explosive-driven slug thrower, and can be taught to operate the 7@0 pressure-driven reset system. My choice, then, is to list the whole thing as a 6@1 weapon use skill--although if you had attempted to teach an indig, I might have required two skill learning checks, one for the single shot mode (in which the automatic reload does not matter, the 6@1 skill) and another for the automatic mode (the 7@0 reset system). I would not require this for someone whose tech bias was already greater than 7@0, but would simply include the 7@0 reload in the 6@1 skill, just because higher bias has its privileges.
- If somehow the system was set up such that it was actually a 7@1 pressure system, then this would indeed be impossible for the indig to operate. Note, however, that we have established that "push the button" is an @0 operation, even for launching a time machine. It would have to involve more than that the system operates as part of the function of the gun when you pull the trigger.
- This is going to raise the question of why operating the gun is a 6@1 instead of 6@0 skill--and the answer is, there is more to it than you, and particularly you the skilled operator, think. It is not simply push the button. It includes holding the weapon securely in a manner that is not going to result in the kick throwing it out of position or injuring you, pointing the barrel in the right direction, and squeezing the trigger to start the cycle. Properly operating the gun is more complicated than properly operating the automatic reset system in the gun--as demonstrated by the fact that you don't even have to realize that the system is there to hit the target with the first bullet, but you do have to understand how the gun works in some detail to do so. Hand a gun to an indig who has fired a bow but not a crossbow, and see if he can make any sense of it.
--M. J. Young